Los Angeles native, photographer and interdisciplinary artist Safi Alia Shabaik had been living and working in New York City for almost a decade when she heard from her mother that her father was having health issues – she noticed something was different and suspected a stroke. In 2009, shortly after Shabaik returned home to California to help her dad, he received a Parkinson’s disease (PD) diagnosis. Shabaik eventually became his primary caregiver until his death on January 1, 2018. Their creative and existential collaboration – “Personality Crash: Portraits of My Father Who Suffered from Advanced Stages of Parkinson’s Disease, Dementia, and Sundowners Syndrome” – grew out of their momentous time together. The exhibition, which features imagery from the last year of Shabaik’s father’s life, opens on Saturday, Feb. 18 at Open Mind Art Space with an artist’s reception from 3 – 8 p.m. It is the first-ever public showing of this body of work.
An exploration of loss and a testament to the power of love, the project examines the human condition when altered by disease from an intimate perspective. Previously an engineering professor at UCLA, Shabaik’s father, Aly H. Shabaik, was considered a brilliant intellect. She began photographing him in 2014, and it was a mutual decision to document his journey, which in essence became his end-of-life journey. He even inadvertently came up with the project’s title. Shabaik said: “One day in his final year, he was trying to explain something to me, and he started talking about ‘personality crashes.’ I asked who was having the personality crash, and he said it was him. That’s when I realized he was very aware of what was happening to him, and in that moment, we also had a title – Personality Crash.”
The exhibition is presented in partnership with the Parkinson’s Foundation through a generous Visual Arts Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Shabaik said: “I am humbled and elated by the NEA’s thoughtful recognition of this project, and I am deeply honored to partner with the Parkinson’s Foundation to exhibit Personality Crash, celebrating the intersection of art and science while bringing visibility to the broader PD community and encouraging discourse on the intricacies of disease, end-of-life care, and dying with dignity. My father would be proud to know that his struggle with the disease will now become something life-affirming.”
There will also be an afternoon of programming on February 25, followed by an artist’s reception; the event will be live-streamed. To register:
https://www.parkinson.org/events/2023/Art-Science
Image: “Papa performs his morning routine at the bathroom sink. [June 19, 2017]”
Dimensions: 14″ x 21 (c) Safi Alia Shabaik
